Strong Law of Small Numbers
- Strong Law of Small Numbers
In his humorous 1988 paper The Strong Law of Small Numbers, the mathematician Richard K. Guy makes the statement that "There aren't enough small numbers to meet the many demands made of them." In other words, any given small number appears in far more contexts than may seem reasonable, leading to many apparently surprising coincidences in mathematics, simply because small numbers appear so often and yet are so few.
Guy's observation has since become part of mathematical folklore, and is commonly referenced by other authors.
See also
* Pigeonhole principle
* Mathematical coincidence
* Proof by intimidation
* Strong law of large numbers (Unrelated, but the origin of the name)
External links
* [http://www.jstor.org/pss/2322249 Richard K. Guy. The Strong Law of Small Numbers. "The American Mathematical Monthly", Vol. 95, No. 8 (Oct., 1988), pp. 697-712]
* http://primes.utm.edu/glossary/page.php?sort=LawOfSmall
* http://mathworld.wolfram.com/StrongLawofSmallNumbers.html
Wikimedia Foundation.
2010.
Look at other dictionaries:
Law of small numbers — The law of small numbers may refer to* The Law of Small Numbers (book), authored by Ladislaus Bortkiewicz ** The Poisson distribution. Sometimes probability distributions are called laws , and the use of that name for this distribution originated … Wikipedia
Law of large numbers — The law of large numbers (LLN) is a theorem in probability that describes the long term stability of the mean of a random variable. Given a random variable with a finite expected value, if its values are repeatedly sampled, as the number of these … Wikipedia
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (season 10) — Law Order: Special Victims Unit Season 10 DVD cover art Country of origin United States … Wikipedia
Law enforcement in the United Kingdom — Crime in the UK · Terrorism in the UK Topics … Wikipedia
Law enforcement in the People's Republic of China — consists of an extensive public security system and a variety of enforcement procedures are used to maintain order in the country. Along with the courts and procuratorates, the country s judicial and public security agencies included the Ministry … Wikipedia
Law, Crime, and Law Enforcement — ▪ 2006 Introduction Trials of former heads of state, U.S. Supreme Court rulings on eminent domain and the death penalty, and high profile cases against former executives of large corporations were leading legal and criminal issues in 2005.… … Universalium
Law enforcement in Japan — Japanese Police logo Aichi Prefectur … Wikipedia
Law of Japan — Contents 1 Historical Developments 2 Sources of law 3 Precedent 4 Civil law 4.1 Contracts … Wikipedia
law — 1. A principle or rule. 2. A statement of fact detailing a sequence or relation of phenomena that is invariable under given conditions. SEE ALSO: principle, rule, theorem. [A.S. lagu] Alexander l. states that a jerky nystagmus becomes worse when… … Medical dictionary
Law school in the United States — In the United States, a law school is an institution where students obtain a professional education in law. A law student must hold an undergraduate degree in any field. In most cases the degree awarded by U.S. law schools is the Juris Doctor ,… … Wikipedia
